“At this jest the audience began to laugh.
“‘But,’ the King added, taking out of the box a carefully sealed packet, ‘can the handkerchiefs, by possibility, be in this?’
“‘Indeed, Sire, they are; but, before opening the parcel, I would request your Majesty to notice that it, also, bears the impression of Cagliostro’s seal.’
“This seal, once rendered so famous by being placed on the celebrated alchemist’s bottles of elixir and liquid gold, I had obtained from Torrini, who had been an old friend of Cagliostro’s.
“‘It is certainly the same,’ my royal spectator answered, after comparing the two seals. Still, in his impatience to learn the contents of the parcel, the King quickly tore open the envelope, and soon displayed before the astonished spectators the six handkerchiefs, which, a few moments before, were still on my table.”
While the use of the Cagliostro seal really formed no part of the trick, its possession by Robert-Houdin goes to show how indefatigably he collected conjuring curios and how quick he was to utilize any part of his collection, and score thereby a brilliant showing.
Cagliostro seals were by no means rare. This prince of charlatans had seals, like adventures, in great variety; and in this connection, it is not out of place to tell something of Cagliostro and thus explain why the parchment bearing his seal created such a sensation at St. Cloud.
Cagliostro has no match in the annals of magic. Not a conjurer in the sense of being a public entertainer, he yet mystified and bewitched his thousands. Something of a physician, more of an alchemist, and altogether a charlatan, he left behind him a trail of brilliant chicanery, daring adventure, and ignominious failure and undoing unequalled in the history of Europe.
